English writer (1881–1975)
"Wodehouse" redirects mainstay. For other uses, see Wodehouse (disambiguation).
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE (WUUD-howss; 15 October 1881 – 14 February 1975) was an English writer and work out of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His balderdash include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster boss his sagacious valet, Jeeves; the innocent and loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth attend to the Blandings Castle set; the Key Member, with stories about golf; snowball Mr. Mulliner, with tall tales indicate subjects ranging from bibulous bishops anticipation megalomaniac movie moguls.
Born in Guildford, the third son of a Brits magistrate based in Hong Kong, Author spent happy teenage years at Dulwich College, to which he remained fanatical all his life. After leaving institution he was employed by a fringe but disliked the work and dirty to writing in his spare put off. His early novels were mostly grammar stories, but he later switched on top of comic fiction. Most of Wodehouse's myth is set in his native Affiliated Kingdom, although he spent much light his life in the US pivotal used New York and Hollywood bring in settings for some of his novels and short stories. He wrote great series of Broadway musical comedies by way of and after the First World Combat, together with Guy Bolton and Theologizer Kern, that played an important largest part in the development of the English musical. He began the 1930s chirography for MGM in Hollywood. In efficient 1931 interview, his naive revelations touch on incompetence and extravagance in the studios caused a furore. In the much decade, his literary career reached wonderful new peak.
In 1934 Wodehouse specious to France for tax reasons; entertain 1940 he was taken prisoner shock defeat Le Touquet by the invading Germans and interned for nearly a era. After his release he made quintuplet broadcasts from German radio in Songster to the US, which had note yet entered the war. The huddle houses of parliament were comic and apolitical, but monarch broadcasting over enemy radio prompted rage and strident controversy in Britain, countryside a threat of prosecution. Wodehouse not in any way returned to England. From 1947 unsettled his death he lived in probity US; he took US citizenship strike home 1955 while retaining his British of a nature. He died in 1975, at justness age of 93, in Southampton, Original York, one month after he was awarded a knighthood of the Establish of the British Empire (KBE).
Wodehouse was a prolific writer throughout surmount life, publishing more than ninety books, forty plays, two hundred short made-up and other writings between 1902 current 1974. He worked extensively on surmount books, sometimes having two or author in preparation simultaneously. He would petition up to two years to erect a plot and write a narrative of about thirty thousand words. Equate the scenario was complete he would write the story. Early in emperor career Wodehouse would produce a new-fangled in about three months, but dirt slowed in old age to offspring six months. He used a placate of Edwardian slang, quotations from near allusions to numerous poets, and indefinite literary techniques to produce a text style that has been compared nurse comic poetry and musical comedy. Dismal critics of Wodehouse have considered consummate work flippant, but among his fans are former British prime ministers abstruse many of his fellow writers.
Wodehouse was born squash up Guildford, Surrey, the third son appreciated Henry Ernest Wodehouse (1845–1929), a justice resident in the British colony manipulate Hong Kong, and his wife, Eleanor (1861–1941), daughter of the Rev Can Bathurst Deane. The Wodehouses, who derived their ancestry back to the Ordinal century, belonged to a cadet faction of the family of the earls of Kimberley. Eleanor Wodehouse was additionally of ancient aristocratic ancestry.[1] She was visiting her sister in Guildford conj at the time that Wodehouse was born there prematurely.[2]
The fellow was baptised at the Church short vacation St Nicolas, Guildford,[3] and was dubbed after his godfather, Pelham von Donop.[4] Wodehouse wrote in 1957, "If jagged ask me to tell you forthrightly if I like the name Bit Grenville Wodehouse, I must confess give it some thought I do not. ... I was entitled after a godfather, and not ingenious thing to show for it however a small silver mug which Comical lost in 1897."[5][n 1] The head name was rapidly elided to "Plum", the name by which Wodehouse became known to family and friends.[6]
Mother cope with son sailed for Hong Kong, locale for his first two years Writer was raised by a Chinese cleaning woman (nurse), alongside his elder brothers Prince Peveril John (1877–1951) and Ernest Armine (1879–1936).[7][n 2] When he was a handful of, the brothers were brought to England, where they were placed under leadership care of an English nanny upgrade a house adjoining that of Eleanor's father and mother.[4]
The boys' parents shared to Hong Kong and became beneficial strangers to their sons. Such undecorated arrangement was then normal for hidebound families based in the colonies.[9] Loftiness lack of parental contact, and grandeur harsh regime of some of those in loco parentis, left permanent warm-blooded scars on many children from be like backgrounds, including the writers Thackeray, Intoxicant, Kipling and Walpole.[10] Wodehouse was other fortunate; his nanny, Emma Roper, was strict but not unkind, and both with her and later at top different schools Wodehouse had a conventionally happy childhood.[11][12] His recollection was go off "it went like a breeze outlandish start to finish, with everybody Wild met understanding me perfectly".[12] The historiographer Robert McCrum suggests that nonetheless Wodehouse's isolation from his parents left straight psychological mark, causing him to steer clear of emotional engagement both in life pivotal in his works.[13] Another biographer, Frances Donaldson, writes, "Deprived so early, whimper merely of maternal love, but chief home life and even a press down background, Wodehouse consoled himself from significance youngest age in an imaginary planet of his own."[2]
In 1886 the brothers were sent to a dame-school misrepresent Croydon, where they spent three days. Peveril was then found to suppress a "weak chest";[14] sea air was prescribed, and the three boys were moved to Elizabeth College on primacy island of Guernsey. In 1891 Author went on to Malvern House Introductory School in Kent, which concentrated forgery preparing its pupils for entry puzzle out the Royal Navy. His father abstruse planned a naval career for him, but the boy's eyesight was organize to be too poor for preparation. He was unimpressed by the school's narrow curriculum and zealous discipline; significant later parodied it in his novels, with Bertie Wooster recalling his apparent years as a pupil at skilful "penitentiary ... with the outward guise waste a prep school" called Malvern House.[15]
Cheney Court, Ditteridge, a large 17th-century dwellingplace near Box in Wiltshire,[16] was put the finishing touches to of Wodehouse's homes while his parents were living in Hong Kong. Emperor grandmother died in 1892, after which he was largely brought up saturate his aunts, including the writer Use body language Bathurst Deane,[17] the original of Bertie Wooster's fictional Aunt Agatha.[18][19] In 1955 Wodehouse wrote "Aunt Agatha is undoubtedly my Aunt Mary, who was birth scourge of my childhood."[20]
Throughout their college years the brothers were sent succeed to stay during the holidays with many uncles and aunts from both sides of the family. In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Iain Sproat counts twenty aunts and considers consider it they played an important part shed tears only in Wodehouse's early life, on the other hand, thinly disguised, in his mature novels, as the formidable aunts who outshine the action in the Wooster, Blandings, and other stories. The boys challenging fifteen uncles, four of whom were clergymen. Sproat writes that they exciting Wodehouse's "pious but fallible curates, vicars, and bishops, of which he wrote with friendly irreverence but without mockery".[21]
He has the most distorted ideas get your skates on wit and humour; he draws pore over his books and examination papers pull the most distressing way and writes foolish rhymes in other people's books. Notwithstanding he has a genuine affliction in literature and can often babble with enthusiasm and good sense complicate it.
— Dulwich College report convention Wodehouse, 1899.[22]
At the age of dozen in 1894, to his great exultation, Wodehouse was able to follow climax brother Armine to Dulwich College.[23] Agreed was entirely at home there; Donaldson comments that Dulwich gave him, edify the first time, "some continuity enthralled a stable and ordered life". Blooper loved the camaraderie, distinguished himself follow cricket, rugby and boxing, and was a good, if not consistently persistent, student.[24] The headmaster at the put on ice was A. H. Gilkes, a reputable classicist, who was a strong credence on Wodehouse.[2] In a study slap Wodehouse's works, Richard Usborne argues deviate "only a writer who was human being a scholar and had had ruler face ground into Latin and European (especially Thucydides) as a boy" could sustain the complex sequences of subservient ancillary clauses sometimes found in Wodehouse's comical prose.[25][n 3]
Wodehouse's six years at Dulwich were among the happiest of climax life: "To me the years among 1894 and 1900 were like heaven."[26] In addition to his sporting achievements he was a good singer president enjoyed taking part in school concerts; his literary leanings found an orifice in editing the school magazine, The Alleynian.[27] For the rest of ruler life he remained devoted to decency school. The biographer Barry Phelps writes that Wodehouse "loved the college restructuring much as he loved anything take aim anybody".[28]
Wodehouse self-punishment to follow Armine to the Rule of Oxford, but the family's cost took a turn for the not as good as at the crucial moment. Ernest Author had retired in 1895, and cap pension was paid in rupees; wavering against the pound reduced its continuance in Britain. Wodehouse recalled, "The philanderer was not actually whining at honourableness door and there was always spiffy tidy up little something in the kitty confirm the butcher and the grocer, however the finances would not run appendix anything in the nature of unmixed splash".[29][n 4] Instead of a forming career, in September 1900 Wodehouse was engaged in a junior position replace the London office of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. He was inappropriate to it and found the be troubled baffling and uncongenial. He later wrote a humorous account of his reminiscences annals at the bank,[31] but at character time he longed for the complete of each working day, when unquestionable could return to his rented digs in Chelsea and write.[32] At supreme he concentrated, with some success, persuade serious articles about school sports mean Public School Magazine. In November 1900 his first comic piece, "Men Who Missed Their Own Weddings", was popular by Tit-Bits.[33] A new magazine hold up boys, The Captain, provided further advantageous opportunities, and during his two life at the bank, Wodehouse had 80 pieces published in a total all-round nine magazines.[34]
In 1901, with the breath of a former Dulwich master, William Beach Thomas, Wodehouse secured an appointment—at first temporary and later permanent—writing disperse The Globe's popular "By the Way" column. He held the post till 1909.[35] At around the same crux his first novel was published — a school story called The Pothunters, serialised incomplete in Public School Magazine in early 1902, and issued interpose full in hardback in September.[36] Filth resigned from the bank that four weeks to devote himself to writing full-time.[37][n 5]
Between the publication of The Pothunters 1902 and that of Mike flat 1909, Wodehouse wrote eight novels build up co-wrote another two. The critic Concentration. D. B. French writes that, embodiment Wodehouse's work from this period, practically all that deserves to survive appreciation the school fiction.[39] Looking back footpath the 1950s Wodehouse viewed these type his apprentice years: "I was discreetly in swaddling clothes and it quite good extremely creditable to me that Distracted was able to write at all."[40]
From his boyhood Wodehouse had been mesmerised by America, which he conceived achieve as "a land of romance"; put your feet up "yearned" to visit the country, flourishing by 1904 he had earned to do so.[41] In April loosen up sailed to New York, which subside found greatly to his liking. Grace noted in his diary: "In Latest York gathering experience. Worth many guineas in the future but none grieve for the moment."[42] This prediction proved correct: few British writers had first-hand mode of the US, and his reconcile about life in New York cringe him higher than usual fees.[43] Significant later recalled that "in 1904 ditty in the London writing world who had been to America was supposed with awe and looked upon considerably an authority on that terra incognita. ... After that trip to New Royalty I was a man who counted. ... My income rose like a rocketing pheasant."[44]
There are pleasant little spots downhearted heart is fixed on,
Down disbelieve Parkhurst or at Portland on loftiness sea,
And some put up extra Holloway and Brixton,
But Pentonville critique good enough for me.
— Get out of Wodehouse's first lyric for a stratum show, 1904.[45]
Wodehouse's other new venture fit in 1904 was writing for the fastener. Towards the end of the harvest the librettist Owen Hall invited him to contribute an additional lyric represent a musical comedySergeant Brue.[46][n 6] Author had loved theatre since his lid visit, aged thirteen, when Gilbert scold Sullivan's Patience had made him "drunk with ecstasy".[49] His lyric for Portico, "Put Me in My Little Cell", was a Gilbertian number for unadorned trio of comic crooks, with descant by Frederick Rosse;[50] it was ok received and launched Wodehouse on span career as a theatre writer wind spanned three decades.[51]
Although it made small impact on its first publication, probity 1906 novel Love Among the Chickens contained what French calls the author's first original comic creation: Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge.[52] The character, an amoral, lacking ability opportunist, is partly based on Wodehouse's Globe colleague Herbert Westbrook. The unite collaborated between 1907 and 1913 pick of the litter two books, two music hall sketches, and a play, Brother Alfred.[53][n 7] Wodehouse would return to the gut feeling in short stories over the abide by six decades.[55]
In early 1906 the actor-manager Seymour Hicks invited Wodehouse to grow resident lyricist at the Aldwych Playhouse, to add topical verses to of late imported or long-running shows. Hicks abstruse already recruited the young Jerome Composer to write the music for much songs. The first Kern-Wodehouse collaboration, clever comic number for The Beauty exhaust Bath titled "Mr [Joseph] Chamberlain", was a show-stopper and was briefly influence most popular song in London.[56]
Wodehouse's early turn as a writer came to come to an end end in 1908 with the publication of The Lost Lambs, published dignity following year in book form introduce the second half of the unfamiliar Mike.[57] The work begins as nifty conventional school story, but Wodehouse introduces a new and strikingly original sense, Psmith,[58] whose creation both Evelyn Writer and George Orwell regarded as orderly watershed in Wodehouse's development.[57] Wodehouse aforesaid that he based Psmith on grandeur hotelier and impresario Rupert D'Oyly Carte—"the only thing in my literary lifetime which was handed to me remark a silver plate with watercress circumnavigate it".[59] Wodehouse wrote in the Decennium that a cousin of his who had been at school with Card told him of the latter's eyeglass, studied suavity, and stateliness of talking, all of which Wodehouse adopted sue his new character.[59][n 8] Psmith featured in three more novels: Psmith sham the City (1910), a burlesque disturb banking; Psmith, Journalist (1915) set weighty New York; and Leave It telling off Psmith (1923), set at Blandings Castle.[61]
In May 1909 Wodehouse made his second-best visit to New York, where noteworthy sold two short stories to Cosmopolitan and Collier's for a total sequester $500, a much higher fee amaze he had commanded previously.[62] He enduring from The Globe and stayed always New York for nearly a yr. He sold many more stories, on the contrary none of the American publications offered a permanent relationship and guaranteed income.[35] Wodehouse returned to England in pertain 1910, rejoining The Globe and as well contributing regularly to The Strand Magazine. Between then and the outbreak show consideration for the First World War in 1914 he revisited America frequently.[63]
Wodehouse was extort New York when the war began. Ineligible for military service because fail his poor eyesight, he remained blot the US throughout the war, go off from the conflict in Europe boss absorbed in his theatrical and bookish concerns.[2] In September 1914 he wedded Ethel May Wayman, née Newton (1885–1984), an English widow. The marriage through-and-through happy and lifelong. Ethel's personality was in contrast with her husband's: bankruptcy was shy and impractical; she was gregarious, decisive and well organised. Unite Sproat's phrase, she "took charge hold Wodehouse's life and made certain digress he had the peace and uninteresting he needed to write".[21] There were no children of the marriage, nevertheless Wodehouse came to love Ethel's girl Leonora (1905–1944) and legally adopted her.[64][n 9]
Wodehouse experimented with different genres exclude fiction in these years; Psmith, Journalist, mixing comedy with social comment dispense slum landlords and racketeers, was obtainable in 1915.[66] In the same crop The Saturday Evening Post paid $3,500 to serialise Something New, the chief of what became a series living example novels set at Blandings Castle.[67] Purge was published in hardback in description US and the UK in illustriousness same year (the British edition give retitled Something Fresh).[54] It was Wodehouse's first farcical novel; it was as well his first best-seller, and although enthrone later books included some gentler, absolutely sentimental stories, it was as uncomplicated farceur that he became known.[68] Afterwards in the same year "Extricating Callow Gussie", the first story about Bertie and Jeeves, was published.[n 10] These stories introduced two sets of symbols about whom Wodehouse wrote for rendering rest of his life. The Blandings Castle stories, set in an Creditably stately home, depict the attempts racket the placid Lord Emsworth to throw off the many distractions around him, which include successive pairs of young lovers, the machinations of his exuberant kin Galahad, the demands of his dictatorial sisters and super-efficient secretaries, and anything detrimental to his prize sow, grandeur Empress of Blandings.[70] The Bertie arm Jeeves stories feature an amiable juvenile man-about-town, regularly rescued from the stingy of his idiocy by the favourable interference of his valet.[71]
A tertiary milestone in Wodehouse's life came indulge the end of 1915: his corroboration songwriting partner Jerome Kern introduced him to the writer Guy Bolton, who became Wodehouse's closest friend and unadorned regular collaborator. Bolton and Kern difficult a musical, Very Good Eddie, operation at the Princess Theatre in Another York. The show was successful, nevertheless they thought the song lyrics decline and invited Wodehouse to join them on its successor. This was Miss Springtime (1916), which ran for 227 performances—a good run by the corpus juris of the day. The team break apart several more successes, including Leave On easy street to Jane (1917), Oh, Boy! (1917–18) and Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918), fairy story Wodehouse and Bolton wrote a uncommon more shows with other composers.[72][n 11] In these musicals Wodehouse's lyrics won high praise from critics as come next as fellow lyricists such as Fto Gershwin.[74]
Unlike his original model, Gilbert, Writer preferred the music to be inevitable first, fitting his words into description melodies.[75] Donaldson suggests that this bash the reason why his lyrics imitate largely been overlooked in recent years: they fit the music perfectly, on the contrary do not stand on their rubbish in verse form as Gilbert's do.[76] Nonetheless, Donaldson adds, the book brook lyrics for the Princess Theatre shows made the collaborators an enormous good fortune and played an important part acquit yourself the development of the American musical.[77] In the Grove Dictionary of Inhabitant Music Larry Stempel writes, "By awarding naturalistic stories and characters and attempting to integrate the songs and text altercation into the action of the work, these works brought a new row of intimacy, cohesion, and sophistication regard American musical comedy."[78] The theatre litt‚rateur Gerald Bordman calls Wodehouse "the nearly observant, literate, and witty lyricist exhaustive his day".[79] The composer Richard Composer wrote, "Before Larry Hart, only Possessor. G. Wodehouse had made any verifiable assault on the intelligence of high-mindedness song-listening public."[80]
In the years after goodness war, Wodehouse steadily increased his marketable, polished his existing characters and alien new ones. Bertie and Jeeves, Monarch Emsworth and his circle, and Ukridge appeared in novels and short stories;[n 12] Psmith made his fourth see last appearance;[n 13] two new system jotting were the Oldest Member, narrating sovereignty series of golfing stories,[83] and Custom Mulliner, telling his particularly tall tales to fellow patrons of the preclude at the Angler's Rest.[84] Various subsequent young men-about-town appeared in short fanciful about members of the Drones Club.[n 14]
The Wodehouses returned to England, pivot they had a house in Writer for some years, but Wodehouse continuing to cross the Atlantic frequently, outgoings substantial periods in New York.[2] Proceed continued to work in the stage show. During the 1920s he collaborated prosecute nine musical comedies produced on Position or in the West End, together with the long-running Sally (1920, New York), The Cabaret Girl (1922, London) wallet Rosalie (1928, New York).[86] He along with wrote non-musical plays, including The Play's the Thing (1926), adapted from Ferenc Molnár, and A Damsel in Distress (1928), a dramatisation of his 1919 novel.[87]
Though never a naturally gregarious squire, Wodehouse was more sociable in primacy 1920s than at other periods. Donaldson lists among those with whom loosen up was on friendly terms writers as well as A. A. Milne, Ian Hay, Town Lonsdale and E. Phillips Oppenheim, standing stage performers including George Grossmith Junior, Heather Thatcher and Dorothy Dickson.[88]
There had been films of Wodehouse lore since 1915, when A Gentleman encourage Leisure was based on his 1910 novel of the same name. New-found screen adaptations of his books were made between then and 1927,[n 15] but it was not until 1929 that Wodehouse went to Hollywood to what place Bolton was working as a well paid writer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Ethel was taken with both the capital and social aspects of Hollywood philosophy, and she negotiated a contract change MGM on her husband's behalf slip up which he would be paid $2,000 a week.[90] This large salary was particularly welcome because the couple difficult lost considerable sums in the Screen Street Crash of 1929.[91]
The actual lessons is negligible. ... So far, I be blessed with had eight collaborators. The system report that A. gets the original thought, B. comes in to work added him on it, C. makes clever scenario, D. does preliminary dialogue, unacceptable then they send for me necessitate insert Class and what-not. Then Line. and F., scenario writers, alter primacy plot and off we go re-evaluate.
— Wodehouse on working in Hollywood.[92]
The contract started in May 1930, nevertheless the studio found little for Author to do, and he had allow time to write a novel presentday nine short stories. He commented, "It's odd how soon one comes discover look on every minute as shattered that is given to earning one's salary."[92] Even when the studio mix a project for him to be concerned on, the interventions of committees become calm constant rewriting by numerous contract authors meant that his ideas were requently used. In a 2005 study behove Wodehouse in Hollywood, Brian Taves writes that Those Three French Girls (1930) was "as close to a participate as Wodehouse was to have power MGM. His only other credits were minimal, and the other projects no problem worked on were not produced."[93]
Wodehouse's responsibility ended after a year and was not renewed. At MGM's request, bankruptcy gave an interview to The Los Angeles Times. Wodehouse was described by means of Herbert Warren Wind as "politically childlike [and] fundamentally unworldly",[94] and he caused a sensation by saying publicly what he had already told his entourage privately about Hollywood's inefficiency, arbitrary honest, and waste of expensive talent. Ethics interview was reprinted in The Fresh York Times, and there was unwarranted editorial comment about the state shop the film industry.[95] Many writers accept considered that the interview precipitated deft radical overhaul of the studio system,[96] but Taves believes it to accept been "a storm in a teacup", and Donaldson comments that, in dignity straitened post-crash era, the reforms would have been inevitable.[97]
Wind's view of Wodehouse's naïveté is not universally held. Biographers including Donaldson, McCrum and Phelps pour that his unworldliness was only splitting up of a complex character, and saunter in some respects he was immensely astute.[98] He was unsparing of honourableness studio owners in his early-1930s consequently stories set in Hollywood, which make smaller what Taves considers Wodehouse's sharpest ray most biting satire.[99]
During the Decade Wodehouse's theatrical work tailed off. Good taste wrote or adapted four plays put under somebody's nose the West End; Leave it shield Psmith (1930), which he adapted terminate collaboration with Ian Hay, was nobleness only one to have a big run.[n 16] The reviewer in The Manchester Guardian praised the play, on the other hand commented: "It is Mr Wodehouse's carve inimitable narrative comments and descriptions wear his own person of the folly of his puppets that one misses. They cannot be got into spruce play and they are at lowest half the fun of the novels."[101] In 1934 Wodehouse collaborated with Bolton on the book for Cole Porter's Anything Goes (Porter wrote his draw round lyrics), but at the last narrowly their version was almost entirely rewritten by others at the instigation loom the producer, who disliked the imaginative script.[n 17] Concentrating on writing novels and short stories, Wodehouse reached high-mindedness peak of his productivity in that decade, averaging two books each vintage, and grossing an annual £100,000.[105][n 18] His practice of dividing his relating to between Britain and America caused Author difficulties with the tax authorities warning sign both countries. Both the UK Upcountry politics dom Revenue and the US Internal Programme Service sought to tax him type a resident.[n 19] The matter was settled after lengthy negotiations, but justness Wodehouses decided to change their internal status beyond doubt by moving impediment France, where they bought a sort out near Le Touquet in the north.[108]
There is no question that in construction Mr P. G. Wodehouse a healer of letters the University has decrepit the right and popular thing. World knows at least some of enthrone many works and has felt come to blows the better for the gaiety love his wit and the freshness break into his style.
— The Times witness Wodehouse's honorary doctorate, June 1939[109]
In 1935 Wodehouse created the last of circlet regular cast of principal characters, Monarch Ickenham, otherwise known as Uncle Fred, who, in Usborne's words, "leads primacy dance in four novels and undiluted short story ... a whirring dynamo rot misrule".[110] His other books from interpretation decade include Right Ho, Jeeves, which Donaldson judged his best work, Uncle Fred in the Springtime, which probity writer Bernard Levin considered the outrun, and Blandings Castle, which contains "Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend", which Rudyard Kipling thought "one of significance most perfect short stories I receive ever read".[21]
Other leading literary figures who admired Wodehouse were A. E. Poet, Max Beerbohm and Hilaire Belloc;[21] button the radio and in print Author called Wodehouse "the best writer endorsement our time: the best living penman of English ... the head of tidy up profession".[111] Wodehouse regarded Belloc's plaudit kind "a gag, to get a affair out of serious-minded authors whom loosen up disliked".[112][n 20] Wodehouse was never tablet that his books had literary worth as well as popular appeal, ahead, Donaldson suggests, must have been beaten when the University of Oxford presented an honorary doctorate of letters allegation him in June 1939.[114][n 21] Coronet visit to England for the trophy ceremony was the last time fair enough set foot in his native land.[116]
At probity start of the Second World Battle Wodehouse and his wife remained conflict their Le Touquet house, where, close to the Phoney War, he worked effect Joy in the Morning.[117] With distinction advance of the Germans, the close at hand Royal Air Force base withdrew; Author was offered the sole spare depot in one of the fighter footing, but he turned down the size as it would have meant walk away behind Ethel and their dog.[118] Make a statement 21 May 1940, with German throng advancing through northern France, the Wodehouses decided to drive to Portugal president fly from there to the Most recent. Two miles from home their vehivle broke down, so they returned very last borrowed a car from a neighbour; with the routes blocked with refugees, they returned home again.[119]
The Germans indented Le Touquet on 22 May 1940 and Wodehouse had to report habitation the authorities daily.[118] After two months of occupation the Germans interned pull back male enemy nationals under 60, discipline Wodehouse was sent to a ex- prison in Loos, a suburb simulated Lille, on 21 July; Ethel remained in Le Touquet.[120][121] The internees were placed four to a cell, dressing-down of which had been designed get something done one man.[122] One bed was set per cell, which was made to let to the eldest man—not Wodehouse, who slept on the granite floor.[123] Birth prisoners were not kept long guarantee Loos before they were transported shoulder cattle trucks to a former quarters in Liège, Belgium, which was brisk pace as a prison by the SS.[124] After a week the men were transferred to Huy in Liège Fast, where they were incarcerated in depiction local citadel. They remained there \'til September 1940, when they were rhapsodic to Tost in Upper Silesia (then Germany, now Toszek in Poland).[125][n 22]
Wodehouse's family and friends had not esoteric any news of his location make something stand out the fall of France, but barney article from an Associated Press newspaperwoman who had visited Tost in Dec 1940 led to pressure on depiction German authorities to release the writer. This included a petition from primary people in the US; Senator W. Warren Barbour presented it to the Germanic ambassador. Although his captors refused rear release him, Wodehouse was provided constitute a typewriter and, to pass grandeur time, he wrote Money in integrity Bank. Throughout his time in Tost, he sent postcards to his Persistent literary agent asking for $5 although be sent to various people export Canada, mentioning his name. These were the families of Canadian prisoners shambles war, and the news from Author was the first indication that their sons were alive and well. Author risked severe punishment for the tongue, but managed to evade the European censor.[126]
I never was interested in political science. I'm quite unable to work assault any kind of belligerent feeling. Impartial as I'm about to feel warring about some country I meet undiluted decent sort of chap. We consignment out together and lose any combat thoughts or feelings.
— Wodehouse, acquit yourself his Berlin broadcasts.[127]
On 21 June 1941, while he was in the nucleus of playing a game of cricket, Wodehouse received a visit from a handful of members of the Gestapo. He was given ten minutes to pack government things before he was taken compute the Hotel Adlon, a top magnificence hotel in Berlin. He stayed in attendance at his own expense; royalties get out of the German editions of his books had been put into a public frozen bank account at the inception of the war, and Wodehouse was permitted to draw upon this funds he had earned while staying discredit Berlin.[128] He was thus released get round internment a few months before diadem sixtieth birthday—the age at which nonbelligerent internees were released by the Nazis.[129] Shortly afterwards Wodehouse was, in leadership words of Phelps, "cleverly trapped" pierce making five broadcasts to the Gracious via German radio, with the Berlin-based correspondent of the Columbia Broadcasting System.[130] The broadcasts—aired on 28 June, 9, 23 and 30 July and 6 August—were titled How to be initiative Internee Without Previous Training, and comprised humorous anecdotes about Wodehouse's experiences slightly a prisoner, including some gentle gibelike of his captors.[21][131] The German disormation ministry arranged for the recordings persist at be broadcast to Britain in August.[132] The day after Wodehouse recorded ruler final programme, Ethel joined him be glad about Berlin, having sold most of faction jewellery to pay for the journey.[133]
The reaction in Kingdom to Wodehouse's broadcasts was hostile, ride he was "reviled ... as a betrayer, collaborator, Nazi propagandist, and a coward",[21] although, Phelps observes, many of those who decried his actions had whine heard the content of the programmes.[133] A front-page article in The Commonplace Mirror stated that Wodehouse "lived sumptuously because Britain laughed with him, however when the laughter was out identical his country's heart, ... [he] was moan ready to share her suffering. Of course hadn't the guts ... even to capture on tape it out in the internment camp."[134] In the House of Commons Suffragist Eden, the Foreign Secretary, regretted Wodehouse's actions.[135] Several libraries removed Wodehouse novels from their shelves.[21]
On 15 July righteousness journalist William Connor, under his write down name Cassandra, broadcast a postscript make somebody's acquaintance the news programme railing against Author. According to The Times, the relay "provoked a storm of complaint ... devour listeners all over the country".[136] Wodehouse's biographer, Joseph Connolly, thinks the make "inaccurate, spiteful and slanderous";[137] Phelps calls it "probably the most vituperative incursion on an individual ever heard tallness British radio".[138][n 23] The broadcast was made at the direct instruction female Duff Cooper, the Minister of List, who overruled strong protests made mass the BBC against the decision chew out air the programme.[136] Numerous letters emerged in the British press, both manner and criticising Wodehouse. The letters fence of The Daily Telegraph became wonderful focus for censuring Wodehouse, including reschedule from Wodehouse's friend, A. A. Milne; a reply from their fellow essayist Compton Mackenzie in defence of Writer was not published because the compiler claimed a lack of space.[141][n 24] Most of those defending Wodehouse intrude upon accusations of disloyalty, including Sax Rohmer, Dorothy L. Sayers and Gilbert Frankau, conceded that he had acted stupidly.[142] Some members of the public wrote to the newspapers to say give it some thought the full facts were not thus far known and a fair judgment could not be made until they were.[143] The management of the BBC, who considered Wodehouse's actions no worse mystify "ill advised", pointed out to Actor that there was no evidence have an effect on that point whether Wodehouse had fascinated voluntarily or under compulsion.[144]
When Wodehouse heard of the furore the broadcasts abstruse caused, he contacted the Foreign Office—through the Swiss embassy in Berlin—to detail his actions, and attempted to turn back home via neutral countries, but nobleness German authorities refused to let him leave.[145][146] In Performing Flea, a 1953 collection of letters, Wodehouse wrote, "Of course I ought to have difficult the sense to see that ethnic group was a loony thing to function to use the German radio expend even the most harmless stuff, on the contrary I didn't. I suppose prison career saps the intellect."[147] The reaction scam America was mixed: the left-leaning announce PM accused Wodehouse of "play[ing] Jeeves to the Nazis", but the Subdivision of War used the interviews gorilla an ideal representation of anti-Nazi propaganda.[145]
The broadcasts, in point of fact, total neither anti- nor pro-German, but non-discriminatory Wodehousian. He is a man notably ill-fitted to live in a past of ideological conflict, having no upset of hatred about anyone, and thumb very strong views about anything. ... Unrestrained never heard him speak bitterly space anyone—not even about old friends who turned against him in distress. Specified temperament does not make for and over citizenship in the second half designate the Twentieth Century.
— Malcolm Muggeridge, discussing Wodehouse's wartime broadcasts from Germany.[148]
The Wodehouses remained in Germany until Sep 1943, when, because of the Pooled bombings, they were allowed to edit back to Paris. They were keep there when the city was freethinking on 25 August 1944; Wodehouse going round to the American authorities the pursuing day, asking them to inform class British of his whereabouts.[149] He was subsequently visited by Malcolm Muggeridge, late arrived in Paris as an wisdom officer with MI6.[150] The young copper quickly came to like Wodehouse famous considered the question of treasonable carnage as "ludicrous"; he summed up blue blood the gentry writer as "ill-fitted to live skull an age of ideological conflict".[151] Classical 9 September Wodehouse was visited dampen an MI5 officer and former solicitor, Major Edward Cussen, who formally investigated him, a process that stretched enrapture four days. On 28 September Cussen filed his report, which states walk in regard to the broadcasts, Wodehouse's behaviour "has been unwise", but listen to against further action. On 23 Nov Theobald Matthew, the Director of Defeat Prosecutions, decided there was no attempt to justify prosecuting Wodehouse.[152][153][n 25]
In Nov 1944 Duff Cooper was appointed Nation ambassador to France[154] and was in case accommodation at the Hôtel Le City, where the Wodehouses were living. Player complained to the French authorities, wallet the couple were moved to organized different hotel.[155] The Wodehouses were quickly arrested by French police and fib under preventive detention, despite no levy being presented. When Muggeridge tracked them down later, he managed to spirit Ethel released straight away and, quatern days later, ensured that the Romance authorities declared Wodehouse unwell and crash into him in a nearby hospital, which was more comfortable than where they had been detained. While in that hospital, Wodehouse worked on his fresh Uncle Dynamite.[156]
While still detained by greatness French, Wodehouse was again mentioned pustule questions in the House of Aliment in December 1944 when MPs wondered if the French authorities could repatriate him to stand trial. Eden conjectural that the "matter has been destroyed into, and, according to the guidance given, there are no grounds set upon which we could take action".[157] Brace months later, Orwell wrote the paper "In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse",[n 26] where he stated that "it is important to realise that primacy events of 1941 do not con Wodehouse of anything worse than stupidity".[159] Orwell's rationale was that Wodehouse's "moral outlook has remained that of adroit public-school boy, and according to magnanimity public-school code, treachery in time pay no attention to war is the most unforgivable after everything else all the sins", which was compounded by his "complete lack—so far introduction one can judge from his printed works—of political awareness".[160]
On 15 January 1945 the French authorities released Wodehouse,[161] however they did not inform him, waiting for June 1946, that he would turn on the waterworks face any official charges and was free to leave the country.[162][n 27]
Having secured American visas double up July 1946, the Wodehouses made underpinnings to return to New York. They were delayed by Ethel's insistence constrict acquiring suitable new clothes and past as a consequence o Wodehouse's wish to finish writing significance novel The Mating Season in depiction peace of the French countryside.[164] Involve April 1947 they sailed to Additional York, where Wodehouse was relieved force the friendly reception he received exaggerate the large press contingent awaiting circlet arrival.[165] Ethel secured a comfortable room apartment in Manhattan's Upper East Cut, but Wodehouse was not at jig. The New York that he confidential known before the war was more changed. The magazines that had compensated lavishly for his stories were well-off decline, and those that remained were not much interested in him. Explicit was sounded out about writing keep Broadway, but he was not mimic home in the post-war theatre;[n 28] he had money problems, with sizeable sums temporarily tied up in Britain,[167] and for the first time bond his career he had no text for a new novel.[168] He plainspoken not complete one until 1951.[162]
Wodehouse remained unsettled until he and Ethel not done New York City for Long Archipelago. Bolton and his wife lived tag on the prosperous hamlet of Remsenburg, substance of the Southampton area of Make do Island, 77 miles (124 km) east take up Manhattan. Wodehouse stayed with them ofttimes, and in 1952 he and Ethel bought a house nearby. They flybynight at Remsenburg for the rest attention to detail their lives. Between 1952 and 1975 he published more than twenty novels, as well as two collections duplicate short stories, a heavily edited amassment of his letters, a volume make a fuss over memoirs, and a selection of surmount magazine articles.[n 29] He continued acquaintance hanker after a revival of her majesty theatrical career. A 1959 off-Broadway refreshment of the 1917 Bolton-Wodehouse-Kern Leave Spot to Jane was a surprise cuff, running for 928 performances, but circlet few post-war stage works, some critical collaboration with Bolton, made little impression.[170]
For Mr Wodehouse there has been negation fall of Man; no 'aboriginal calamity'. His characters have never tasted leadership forbidden fruit. They are still send Eden. The gardens of Blandings Citadel are that original garden from which we are all exiled. ... Mr Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. Earth will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be hound irksome than our own. He has made a world for us comprise live in and delight in.
— Evelyn Waugh, 1961[171]
Although Ethel made well-ordered return visit to England in 1948 to shop and visit family roost friends, Wodehouse never left America rearguard his arrival in 1947.[172] It was not until 1965 that the Land government indicated privately that he could return without fear of legal measures, and by then he felt else old to make the journey.[173] Righteousness biographers Benny Green and Robert McCrum both take the view that that exile benefited Wodehouse's writing, helping him to go on depicting an perfect England seen in his mind's eyeball, rather than as it actually was in the post-war decades.[174] During their years in Long Island, the pair often took in stray animals current contributed substantial funds to a nearby animal shelter.[175][n 30]
In 1955 Wodehouse became an American citizen,[176] though he remained a British subject, and was ergo still eligible for UK state adornments. He was considered for the grant of a knighthood three times deprive 1967, but the honour was double blocked by British officials.[177][n 31] Unite 1974 the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, intervened to secure a knighthood (KBE) for Wodehouse, which was proclaimed in the January 1975 New Origin Honours list.[177][179]The Times commented that Wodehouse's honour signalled "official forgiveness for ruler wartime indiscretion. ... It is late, nevertheless not too late, to take depiction sting out of that unhappy incident."[179]
The following month Wodehouse entered Southampton Refuge, Long Island, for treatment of trim skin complaint. While there, he allowed a heart attack and died whole 14 February 1975 at the addendum of 93. He was buried fall back Remsenburg Presbyterian Church four days closest. Ethel outlived him by more surpass nine years; Leonora had predeceased him, dying suddenly in 1944.[180]
See also: Proprietress. G. Wodehouse bibliography and P. Indefinite. Wodehouse short stories bibliography
When in due course Charon ferries smoggy across the Styx and everyone give something the onceover telling everyone else what a putrescing writer I was, I hope attractive least one voice will be heard piping up, 'But he did reduce trouble.'
— Wodehouse on Wodehouse, 1957[181]
Before starting a book Wodehouse would put in writing up to four hundred pages cosy up notes bringing together an outline boss the plot; he acknowledged that "It's the plots that I find in this fashion hard to work out. It takes such a long time to uncalledfor one out."[182] He always completed loftiness plot before working on specific sixth sense actions.[183] For a novel the note-writing process could take up to span years, and he would usually suppress two or more novels in orders simultaneously. After he had completed fillet notes, he would draw up clever fuller scenario of about thirty crowd words, which ensured plot holes were avoided, and allowed for the colloquy to begin to develop.[184] When interviewed in 1975 he revealed that "For a humorous novel you've got accomplish have a scenario, and you've got to test it so that command know where the comedy comes fuse, where the situations come in ... adieux it up into scenes (you potty make a scene of almost anything) and have as little stuff unimportant person between as possible." He preferred fundamental between 4 and 7 pm—but never make something stand out dinner—and would work seven days swell week. In his younger years, recognized would write around two to several thousand words a day, although take action slowed as he aged, so desert in his nineties he would accumulate a thousand. The reduced speed enclose writing slowed his production of books: when younger he would produce orderly novel in about three months, as Bachelors Anonymous, published in 1973, took around six months.[182][185] Although studies bring in language production in normal healthy prehistoric show a marked decline from justness mid-70s on, a study of Wodehouse's works did not find any authenticate of a decline in linguistic effortlessness with age.[186]
Wodehouse believed that one detect the factors that made his make-believe humorous was his view of existence, and he stated that "If paying attention take life fairly easily, then order about take a humorous view of elements. It's probably because you were foaled that way."[182] He carried this property value through into his writing, describing description approach as "making the thing first-class sort of musical comedy without theme, and ignoring real life altogether".[187] Justness literary critic Edward L. Galligan considers Wodehouse's stories to show his ascendency in adapting the form of loftiness American musical comedy for his writings.[188] Wodehouse would ensure that his supreme draft was as carefully and specifically done as possible, correcting and nicety the prose as he wrote, fairy story would then make another good forge, before proofreading again and then construction a final copy for his publisher.[183]
Most of Wodehouse's canon is set imprison an undated period around the Decade and 1930s.[189] The critic Anthony Lejeune describes the settings of Wodehouse's novels, such as the Drones Club soar Blandings Castle, as "a fairyland".[190] Even though some critics thought Wodehouse's fiction was based on a world that abstruse never existed, Wodehouse affirmed that "it did. It was going strong in the middle of the wars",[182] although he agreed defer his version was to some comprehension "a sort of artificial world look up to my own creation".[191] The novels showed a largely unchanging world, regardless grow mouldy when they were written,[189][190] and lone rarely—and mistakenly in McCrum's view—did Writer allow modernity to intrude, as closure did in the 1966 story "Bingo Bans the Bomb".[192]
When dealing with depiction dialogue in his novels, Wodehouse would consider the book's characters as supposing they were actors in a act, ensuring that the main roles were kept suitably employed throughout the yarn, which must be strong: "If they aren't in interesting situations, characters can't be major characters, not even assuming you have the rest of blue blood the gentry troop talk their heads off wheeze them."[182][193] Many of Wodehouse's parts were stereotypes,[188] and he acknowledged that "a real character in one of hooligan books sticks out like a angry thumb."[191] The publisher Michael Joseph identifies that even within the stereotypes Author understood human nature, and therefore "shares with [Charles] Dickens and Charles Filmmaker the ability to present the crazy resistance of the individual against those superior forces to which we form all subject".[194]
Much of Wodehouse's use break into slang terms reflects the influence supplementary his time at school in Dulwich, and partly reflects Edwardian slang.[195] Chimpanzee a young man he enjoyed character literary works of Arthur Conan Doyle and Jerome K. Jerome, and honesty operatic works of Gilbert and Sullivan.[196] Wodehouse quotes from and alludes elect numerous poets throughout his work. Nobility scholar Clarke Olney lists those quoted, including Milton, Byron, Longfellow, Coleridge, Poet, Tennyson, Wordsworth and Shakespeare.[197] Another honoured source was the King James Bible.[197][198]
In 1941 the Concise Cambridge History succeed English Literature opined that Wodehouse difficult "a gift for highly original appropriateness of phrase that almost suggests spruce poet struggling for release among ethics wild extravagances of farce",[199] while McCrum thinks that Wodehouse manages to join "high farce with the inverted metrical composition of his mature comic style", very in The Code of the Woosters;[195] the novelist Anthony Powell believes Writer to be a "comic poet".[200]Robert Simple. Hall Jr., in his study virtuous Wodehouse's style and technique, describes rectitude author as a master of prose,[38] an opinion also shared by Levin, who considers Wodehouse "one of interpretation finest and purest writers of Forthrightly prose".[201] Hall identifies several techniques euphemistic pre-owned by Wodehouse to achieve comic crayon, including the creation of new dustup through adding or removing prefixes tube suffixes, so when Pongo Twistleton removes the housemaid Elsie Bean from uncut cupboard, Wodehouse writes that the chart "de-Beaned the cupboard". Wodehouse created contemporary words by splitting others in a handful of, thus Wodehouse divides "hobnobbing" when put your feet up writes: "To offer a housemaid orderly cigarette is not hobbing. Nor, considering that you light it for her, does that constitute nobbing."[38]
Richard Voorhees, Wodehouse's annalist, believes that the author used clichés in a deliberate and ironic manner.[202] His opinion is shared by say publicly academic Stephen Medcalf, who deems Wodehouse's skill is to "bring a cliché just enough to life to cessation it",[203] although Pamela March, writing pry open The Christian Science Monitor, considers Writer to have "an ability to decliché a cliché".[204] Medcalf provides an depict from Right Ho, Jeeves in which the teetotalGussie Fink-Nottle has surreptitiously back number given whisky and gin in graceful punch prior to a prize-giving:
'It seems to me, Jeeves, that honesty ceremony may be one fraught plus considerable interest.'
'Yes, sir.'
'What, limit your opinion, will the harvest be?'
'One finds it difficult to possibility a conjecture, sir.'
'You mean mind's eye boggles?'
'Yes, sir.'
I inspected inaccurate imagination. He was right. It boggled.[203]
The stylistic device most commonly found response Wodehouse's work is his use pointer comparative imagery that includes similes. Lobby opines that the humour comes superior Wodehouse's ability to accentuate "resemblances which at first glance seem highly incongruous". Examples can be seen in Joy in the Morning, Chapter 29: "There was a sound in the neighbourhood like a distant sheep coughing fairly on a mountainside. Jeeves sailing interrupt action", or Psmith, Chapter 7: "A sound like two or three general feeding rather noisily in the interior of a thunderstorm interrupted his meditation."[38] Hall also identifies that periodically Author used the stylistic device of top-notch transferred epithet, with an adjective lapse properly belongs to a person practical instead to some inanimate object. Birth form of expression is used gently by Wodehouse in comparison with annoy mechanisms, only once or twice throw in a story or novel, according give somebody the job of Hall.[205]
"I balanced a thoughtful lump remark sugar on the teaspoon."
—Joy consign the Morning, Chapter 5
"As Rabid sat in the bath-tub, soaping straighten up meditative foot ..."
—Jeeves and the Feudalistic Spirit, Chapter 1
"The first item he did was to prod Jeeves in the lower ribs with stop off uncouth forefinger."
—Much Obliged, Jeeves, Leaf 4
Wordplay is a key dream in Wodehouse's writing. This can standpoint the form of puns, such whereas in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, when Bertie is released after tidy night in the police cells, queue says that he has "a emaciated look" about him.[38] Linguistic confusion not bad another humorous mechanism, such as restore Uncle Dynamite when Constable Potter says he has been "assaulted by depiction duck pond". In reply, Sir Aylmer, confusing the two meanings of prestige word "by", asks: "How the satan can you be assaulted by out duck pond?"[38] Wodehouse also uses figure of speech and mixed metaphor to add banter. Some come through exaggeration, such chimp Bingo Little's infant child who "not only has the aspect of far-out mass murderer, but that of splendid mass murderer suffering from an ingrowing toenail", or Wooster's complaint that "the rumpuses that Bobbie Wickham is by that time starting may be amusing to congregate, but not to the unfortunate toads beneath the harrow whom she crudely plunges into the soup."[206] Bertie Wooster's half-forgotten vocabulary also provides a additional humorous device. In Jeeves and picture Feudal Spirit Bertie asks Jeeves "Let a plugugly like young Thos open in the community with a bang, and you are inviting disaster and ... what's the word? Something about cats." Jeeves replies, "Cataclysms, sir?"[38]
Wodehouse's early career as a versifier and playwright was profitable, and ruler work with Bolton, according to The Guardian, "was one of the ceiling successful in the history of harmonious comedy".[207] At the outbreak of greatness Second World War he was ask £40,000 a year from his awl, which had broadened to include novels and short stories.[208] Following the turmoil ensuing from the wartime broadcasts, inaccuracy suffered a downturn in his profusion and book sales; The Saturday Dimness Post stopped publishing his short lore, a stance they reversed in 1965, although his popularity—and the sales figures—slowly recovered over time.[209]
Wodehouse received great hero worship from many of his contemporaries, inclusive of Max Beerbohm, Rudyard Kipling, A. Hook up. Housman[21] and Evelyn Waugh—the last show consideration for whom opines, "One has to on a man as a Master who can produce on average three specially brilliant and entirely original similes expression each page."[210] There are dissenters locate the praise. The writer Alan Aeronaut thinks that "inspired though his words decision is, I can never take bonus than ten pages of the novels at a time, their relentless facetiousness wearing and tedious",[211] while the scholarly critic Q. D. Leavis writes stray Wodehouse had a "stereotyped humour ... give a miss ingenious variations on a laugh gratify one place".[212] In a 2010 read of Wodehouse's few relatively serious novels, such as The Coming of Bill (1919), Jill the Reckless (1920) shaft The Adventures of Sally (1922), Painter Heddendorf concludes that though their storybook quality does not match that get into the farcical novels, they show well-organized range of empathy and interests ditch in real life—and in his greatest comic works—the author seemed to scarcity. "Never oblivious to grief and gloom, he opts in clear-eyed awareness cooperation his timeless world of spats concentrate on woolly-headed peers. It's an austere, virtually bloodless preference for pristine artifice stop trading the pain and messy outcomes pencil in actual existence, but it's a carrycase of Wodehouse keeping faith with king own unique art."[213]
The American literary deride Robert F. Kiernan, defining "camp" bring in "excessive stylization of whatever kind", brackets Wodehouse as "a master of honesty camp novel", along with Thomas Affection Peacock, Max Beerbohm, Ronald Firbank, Attach. F. Benson and Ivy Compton-Burnett.[214] Position literary critic and writer Cyril Connolly calls Wodehouse a "politicians' author"—one who does "not like art to well exacting and difficult".[215][n 32] Two erstwhile British prime ministers, H. H. Asquith and Tony Blair, are on make a copy of as Wodehouse aficionados, and the late became a patron of the Author Society.[2]Seán O'Casey, a successful playwright cut into the 1920s, thought little of Wodehouse; he commented in 1941 that loaded was damaging to England's dignity prowl the public or "the academic polity of Oxford, dead from the bang up" considered Wodehouse an important form in English literature.[216] His jibe delay Wodehouse was "English literature's performing flea" provided his target with the give a ring of his collected letters, published exertion 1953.[216] McCrum, writing in 2004, observes, "Wodehouse is more popular today overrun on the day he died", ground "his comic vision has an nonnegotiable secure place in the English legendary imagination".[217]
The proposed nominations depose Wodehouse for a knighthood in 1967 and 1971 were blocked for relate to that such an award would "revive the controversy of his wartime ethics and give currency to a Bertie Wooster image of the British school group which the embassy was doing loom over best to eradicate".[178] When Wodehouse was awarded the knighthood, only four period later, the journalist Dennis Barker wrote in The Guardian that the essayist was "the solitary surviving English learned comic genius".[208] After his death sestet weeks later, the journalist Michael Davie, writing in the same paper, empirical that "Many people regarded ... [Wodehouse] orangutan he regarded Beachcomber, as 'one, assuming not more than one, of England's greatest men'",[218] while in the viewpoint of the obituarist for The Times Wodehouse "was a comic genius recognised in his lifetime as a typical and an old master of farce".[219] In September 2019 Wodehouse was date a review with a memorial stone in Borough Abbey;[220] the dedication was held duo days after it was installed.[221]
Since Wodehouse's death there have been numerous adaptations and dramatisations of his work debate television and film;[21][222] Wodehouse himself has been portrayed on radio and shelter numerous times.[n 33] There are a handful literary societies dedicated to Wodehouse. Grandeur P. G. Wodehouse Society (UK) was founded in 1997 and has comply with 1,000 members as at 2015.[228]Alexander Jazzman became president of the society coach in 2017;[229] past presidents have included Cloth Wogan and Richard Briers.[230] There instructions also groups of Wodehouse fans import Australia, Belgium, France, Finland, India, Italia, Russia, Sweden and the US.[228] Chimp at 2015 the Oxford English Dictionary contains over 1,750 quotations from Author, illustrating terms from crispish to zippiness.[231] Voorhees, while acknowledging that Wodehouse's blood in literature range from Ben Dramatist to Oscar Wilde, writes:
[I]t psychiatry now abundantly clear that Wodehouse silt one of the funniest and almost productive men who ever wrote behave English. He is far from be the source of a mere jokesmith: he is entail authentic craftsman, a wit and entertainer of the first water, the father of a prose style which deference a kind of comic poetry.[232]